Please Help! I confessed my feelings to my cousin and she rejected me

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Hello everyone! Please forgive me as this is an edited shorter version of this post. I tried to edit the original post but I couldn't because I didn't have an account when I initially posted it, so I posted it as a guest.

Thank you in advance for the help!

I am a 23 year old male, I was born and raised in a different country than most of my cousins and relatives; they live in the U.S., and I lived overseas. When I turned 18, I decided to move to the U.S. for a better education.

Throughout the last 5 years here in the U.S. I was very close to my aunts family, even lived at their house for a few months. During the last couple of years I developed a major crush on my (now 19 years old) cousin. My feelings were getting stronger and stronger every time she is around. My cousin <let's call her C> and I, were pretty close (nothing romantic though), just close friends.

I tried to ignore my feelings for a little but I couldn't. So I decided to do something about it, but before I talk to my cousin C, I wanted to let her mother (my aunt) know how I feel and see how she would react (Me and my aunt are very close friends as well). My aunt was surprised at first but eventually said that she wouldn't mind it as long as C was okay with it, In fact, she really liked the idea to the point were she started giving me advice on how to approach C.

I wanted many times to talk to C about my feelings but never had enough courage to do so. Four months ago I moved out of town for Grad school. Being away made me realize that my feelings were much more than just a crush because all I could think of is how not being around C made me unhappy. I tried to stay in touch with her as much as possible, mostly through text messaging.

I decided to step it up a notch so I started giving her hints about my feelings every time I had a chance, like I would send her love songs, and tell her that I miss her. She also made it clear that I am special person in her life, like when she sent me a care package with all my favorite stuff inside, and when she sent me a song that says something along the lines that I am her "heaven" and she prays that we end up together but she knows that it will never happen.

Yesterday I decided to face my fear and just rip the band-aid off and confess to her how I felt. So I did, I did it in a playful manner, I started by saying that I have feelings for a girl and asked her if she could guess who this girl might be. After a couple of guesses, she said "Me?" and I said yes. She then said that she had a feeling that something was going on and now she knows what it is, and that she thinks it is too early to be thinking about things like that (again, she is 19 now and I am 23). She also said that she wants things to stay the way they are. It kinda broke my heart, but I promised her that nothing will change, and I will treat her the same way I did before.

Knowing her, I highly doubted that the "too early" thing is why she rejected me, but I wasn't entirely sure. So I decided to give my aunt a call and let her know what happened. It turned out that C had told her mom about my confession an how she thinks it's weird because we are cousins. My aunt told her that it is totally up to her what to do next but being cousins is not a deal breaker. Also, according to my aunt, C was very happy and excited about this whole thing, but was confused because she thought it was weird. So I told my aunt that I can send her articles of facts about cousin relationships and forward them over to C to help her get over her confusion. I did think about sending these articles myself to C, but I don't have a reason on why I would send them because she never told me she feels weird about it, she only told her mom that, not me. She told me that it was just too early to worry about these things and kept it at that.

So I sent the articles to my aunt and hoping that she would share them with C. As far as I know, C doesn't know that I talked to her mom about this. And she made sure to tell her mom not to share with me what they talked about, but my aunt really wants this to happen and that's why she is trying to help.

Do you guys think there's hope? Should I keep trying? or should I just move on? I must admit, it is gonna be extremely hard moving on because I really like her, and honestly I passed on a few chances with other girls just because I really want this to happen. What do you think I should do next?

Please help! any advice is very much appreciated. And Thank you in advance! :cheesy:

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sure there is hope. but she's 19, so just keep in mind that any romance you forge with her now might not last. don't rush it.

Thank you for the encouragement!

I do understand how giving the relationship time to mature would give a long term stability. However, I am not sure on how to treat her now, should I just keep doing what I have been doing for the past 2 years? Or should I just give her her room and just cut down on communicating with her?

I am also worried about losing her to someone else.

I apologize if that sounded desperate, I just REALLY don't want to lose her.

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here's the thing.... at 19, she's going to date around. trust me, you would rather "lose" her to someone else (and then another and another and another) now than to be one of the many flings she is likely to have. just be there for her. be YOU for her. be her rock, the one she can come to, even when her heart gets broken by other people. but be careful not to smother her, too. be the rock in her life, but not the kind of rock that she keeps stubbing her toe on.

i know this is going to sound impossible to you, but for now, you need to be dating too. she may still be young, but it's not like you're old and wizened either go out, have fun! you don't have to get serious with anyone if you don't want to, but make sure those you date are aware that you're just being footloose and fancy free. treat them with respect and compassion and don't do the whole wham bam thank you mam with them... consider this period of your life (and hers) as preparation, as life lessons in how to treat each other. dating is an incredibly important part of life, because you learn so much about how to build a lasting relationship... and you also learn what rips relationships apart.

back in the old days people grew up with role models on how marriage works. you know, back in the days when 'dating' wasn't allowed as we know it today. instead, people 'courted', and were rarely left alone together. your generation (nor mine) grew up like that. our role models for how to treat the opposite sex aren't generally so upstanding... even if we had parents who loved each other, we had peer influence, and tv and movies that glorified treating each other as disposable commodities. so first hand experience of dating really is crucial for us to learn the ropes... because we have to gain our real experience through the school of hard knocks.

so don't be afraid to let her fly. you both need this time more than you can imagine. and if one or the other of you falls in love with someone else, well, that happens. but to not give each other that chance isn't really love at all.